Thinking of jumping to analog...which turntable?


Hi! I have a very nice digital setup right now but I was thinking of trying the analog route. My question is how much would I have to spend to beat on analog equipment to beat what I have and which TT/tonearm/cartrige combo would you recommend? What I was thinking is trying some good value TT (VPI Jr??) but given the quality of my digital set up I wonder if I will have to go higher to better my current setup?

Current setup is:

Lector 7TL CDP
Lamm L1 pre
Lamm ML 1 amp
Verity Fidelio speakers.

Any advice is appreciated....thanks
bezenchuk
For $1000 to $1200 you should be able to get a nice used VPI HW-19jr table with a good arm (JMW, SME) and a decent cartridge. Don't worry so much about which ones for now. There's a lot of personal preference involved ultimately, and you'll have to experiment later if you decide vinyl is for you.
You may be shocked at how well any reasonable analog setup competes with digital.

If the sound from something like this isn't at least in the ballpark, then analog may not be for you. And you can resell for what you paid very easily.
Spend your money on *proper* power delivery/noise control for your present system. You'll be stumped.

With psychic power and primal intensity,
How about the BIX w/RB250 for around $700 to start with? Reportedly a pretty nice table at a very nice price. Multiple cartridge choices for this setup also.
I think the main question here is "how many records do you already own?"

If not many, I would seriously consider NOT getting into analog at all. It's wonderfull that there is so much used vinyl available at this time but a lot of it is worn and new lp's can be more expensive than CD.

A properly set up turntable can yield better sonics than CD, but at what cost? I personally found with my VPI HW19jr that my Jolida performed better over A WIDER VARIETY OF CD'S. This is not to say it didn't sound good, but in general the CD was easier and more listenable ie. less ticks, pops, and NO END OF RECORD MISTRACKING!!!!. I now own a TNT 6 and it IS better than my cd's but cost WAAAYYY more than my cd player.

I say this knowing full well that there will be some angry people, but I'm not bashing LP, I love it BUT if I didn't own any records or at least 200-300 I wouldn't be buying a tt.

(this is gonna hurt....)
But you can make the search for records a mission. Used record stores, record conventions, online catalogs. I don't know how many records I rescued from garage sales and used record stores. Problem is you need a record cleaning machine to do it right... But analog sounds so much better than digital I think it's worth it!